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16 hours ago

Unfortunately, since this series declined rapidly after a promising start in the first two books, this should have been called "G is for Garbage"
votes 0 Helpful / 0 Funny / 0 Agree / 0 Disagree

20 hours ago

Thomas is near his best here in this off-beat, whimsical tale of double, triple and quadruple cross set in the Philippines during the early days of the Aquino regime. The plot involves an attempt to bribe and Filipino revolutionary with $5million, and the efforts of a pack of world class grifters to steal it.

As with most of Thomas' novels, his depictions of politics, bureaucracy and international relations are almost as much fun as his labyrinthine plots. His deft hand with characterization is very stong here, and no reader will soon forget Otherguy Overby, "that fucking Durant" or Artie Wu, the pretender to the Imperial throne of China.
votes 1 Helpful / 0 Funny / 0 Agree / 0 Disagree

20 hours ago

Anderson and Dickson wrote nine stories about the Hoka, their imaginative and imitative race that look like animated teddy bears, back in the fifties, the golden age of pulp sci-fi. Six of the stories were collected in Earthman's Burden, and the remaining three, a new story written for this book and a comical "critique" of them are included here.

The Hoka, in Anderson and Dickson's creative minds, are eager to adapt their culture and individuality to imitations of human history or literature, invariably with bemusing and sometimes hilarious results. Here they do baseball, English spy literature, the Jungle Book and the Napoleonic Wars and while the stories are not as strong as those included in Earthman's Burden, they're pretty solid.

Dickson and Anderson wrote the stories in their early days in the genre, and unabashedly for the money, but they didn't stint on their undoubted craft in doing so. The concept, which could have led to utterly trivial nonsense, works quite well in their hands and is well worth reading.

For my part, what makes this book most worthwhile is the comic essay at the end by Sandra Miesel a medievalist and sci-fi/fantasy critic. It is written in the style of post colonialist Marxism, accusing the writers of being dupes of the "speciesist" oppressors of the human dominated "Interbeing League."
votes 2 Helpful / 0 Funny / 0 Agree / 0 Disagree

yesterday

I'm Popeye the sailor man.
I live in a garbage can.
I turned on my heater and burned my peter.
I'm Popeye the sailor man.



My friend told me this poem about 29 or 30 years go.
votes 0 Helpful / 0 Funny / 0 Agree / 0 Disagree

yesterday

I've obviously been a fan of the vampire genre in literature since I first began to read way back when (I borrowed "Dracula" at the age of 8 from the grandmother of a friend and only understood portions of it, but I was "hooked" in spite of my limited comprehension), but I understand that its become more than moribund over the decades. Modern writers spend a great deal of their efforts trying to inject new life into the genre by coming up with twists to standard vampire mythology. Sure, I can appreciate why they do it, but it seldom, if ever, works. I'll take a marble-mouthed Eastern European Count in a cape anyday over a long-haired, existentially tortured "Goth" vampire.

In "Nightlife", a seemingly vampiric predator hunts among the city's homeless population, sustaining his own unnatural existence with their blood, and their "fear", until some of them band together, and decide to fight back.

Ellis tries, I'll give him that. Some of what he comes up with works to a point (I like the idea of a vampire feading as much on the fear of a victim as on the blood), and is certainly inventive. Overall, it doesn't quite work, and "Nightlife" is not ever going to qualify as a "classic", but it's a brisk, fairly imaginative read, and you could do a lot worse. If I come across another book by Jack Ellis, I'd be inclined to read it, and these days, considering the current state of "horror" novels, that's pretty strong praise.
votes 3 Helpful / 0 Funny / 0 Agree / 0 Disagree

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